That statement might make competitors choke on their coffee, given that Cariden's sofware -- used for evaluating and planning IP/MPLS networks -- just fell into enemy hands. Cisco announced Thursday that it's buying Cariden for roughly US$141 million.
(See Cisco to Spend $141M for More SDN Help.)

"It is our express intent to leave it multivendor," says Shailesh Shukla, vice president of the newly created service-provider software and applications group (i.e., the new boss of Cariden). "You know that service provider networks are multivendor, so it's important for any software platform that's involved in the network planning to be multivendor."

As for the "open" part, Cisco plans to standardize Cariden interfaces by creating the appropriate extensions to standards such as GMPLS and RSVP.
"There's nothing inherently proprietary about any of those interfaces," says Kishore Seshadri, a Cisco director of product management.

Even so, it sounds awkward for Cisco to own a tool that's meant to peek into, say, Juniper equipment. It's one thing for a smaller player like Cyan Inc. to be able to do that. Cisco is a bigger name with a stigma of world domination and Godzilla-sized footprints.

"Juniper and Alcatel-Lucent were using Cariden. If I were them, I'd be a little bit worried," says Eve Griliches, an analyst with ACG Research .

Cisco counters by pointing out that it's already embracing a multivendor world, one where customers use (gasp!) other companies' gear. Prime, Cisco's own network management suite, has had multivendor support for a year and a half, Shukla says.

"We have real deployments of customers where Prime is managing other vendors' equipment" he says. "So the multivendor piece is not an inherent conflict," he says.

Cisco describes the division this way: Cariden is specifically for service providers, whereas Insieme is more about the data center.

"What service provider customers are asking for is not what we're hearing on the data-center side," where much of the buzz is about the potential for new networks built on commodity switches, Seshadri says. "What they [the service providers] seem to be looking for is more of an incremental approach."

That incremental approach has become popular in SDN circles, especially when talks of service-provider networks come up. It's obvious -- telcos won't rip up networks for SDN's sake -- but it's got some implications that equipment vendors might not love. Namely, it implies SDN will have to tailor to multivendor networks and probably support multiple types of controllers.

Regardless of what Cisco actually does with it, Cariden is going to fill a gap. Cisco sees Cariden's software being merged with nLight, the control-plane technology announced in October for provisioning the IP and optical layers together. The result, in theory, is a way to provision network paths by picking optimal combinations of IP and optical connections. (See Cisco's Core Router Gets Optical Genes.)

"Cisco really didn't have the orchestration part, and they really needed it," Griliches says. "They are definitely more focused on adding value in the software space. I think people don't give Cisco enough credit in the sense that they're handling the market changes in that space.

"My question is: Why isn't Cariden going to be integrated with Prime, the Cisco network managment system? It could be that it's just too early," she adds.

There's also the fact that Cariden has an IP/MPLS heritage but falls short on the optical side. Cariden had already been working on IP-plus-optical management, Shukla claims, but Griliches has her doubts about how much optical experience Cariden has amassed.

"I don't think Cariden has a lot of time working on the optical side of things. They're talking about IP-and-optical and multilayer optimization. Cariden says they've been working on this for a year, but given all their clients, I don't know how much they've done," Griliches says.

Cisco says Cariden hasn't had to work closely with other vendors in order to tap their equipment, that it's just been arm's length.&nbsp;

But I could swear Cariden told me they worked hard to develop deep, involved partnerships with all the major equipment vendors, in order to 'read' their equipment.

It's possible the latter is more related to Cariden's analytics functions, which are relatively new. In any event, I'm still doubting Cariden will be able to keep offering its normal business for very long. Fwiw, Cisco says I'm wrong about that.

The ALU CPAM tool integrated into their 5620 SAM NMS is built off of Cariden MATE so it will certainly be interesting to see how things play out.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It's completely seamless in the NMS so I'm sure there are some proprietary mechansisms Cariden and ALU are using between eachother.

When we spoke earlier this year, we were talking about *customers* (not vendors) as partners.

Cariden collects (from live customer networks) relevant equipment, topology, and traffic information, and then models it over time so that these networks can be better managed and orchestrated by engineering and operations groups.&nbsp;

Cariden has only used published, generally available interfaces without relying on any "back doors" from other vendors; in any case,&nbsp;there is no vendor lab where one can replicate the issues we solved in the varied, multiplatform, worldwide service provider space.

@ dwxThe Alcatel-Lucent 5650 CPAM is developed solely by Alcatel-Lucent and is not &ldquo;built off of Cariden MATE&rdquo;. Integration with third-party products such as Cariden MATE or OPNET SP Guru Network Planner use open interfaces and are certified as part of Alcatel-Lucent&rsquo;s OSS Connected Partner program.

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